Easy
Doesn't It:Goldman
Sach's Lloyd Blankfein notes that there is “no
question that low interest rates have exacerbated the wealth gap
between the poor and the rich because the rich have assets." And
he is quite concerned that “people” will find it quite jarring
when the Fed puts on the brakes.. America's
Team:
It's official, Tom Brady and the Patriots cheat. So?

Kill
Bill:Mitch
McConnell is resurrecting the once-defeated
(56 to 40) Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), because his
masters really, really want the bill. Supposedly the bill would
prevent cyber-crimes by requiring the private sector give
all of your data and information to the government
for safekeeping. There's a joke there, but it's not very funny –
the government can't keep its own personnel files secret and even
promises to distribute the information it gets under CISA to any and
all law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to Barney Fife. The bill
is simply another grab by the government in its
ongoing war against privacy, this time specifically
exempting its snooping from any FOIA requests.Misplaced
Loyalties:
Globally the fossil fuel industry reaps $550 billion in government
support, while they proceed to fry us. Renewable energy, which could
be our salvation if only, gets just over $100 billion. Even so, the
situation
is not totally hopeless; Germany got 78%
of its energy
from renewable sources in May.

Me-Tooism:
Not to be left out, after hackers embarrassed Chrysler, now it's
GM's turn in the barrel as its OnStar system lets hackers unlock the
car and start the engine.

Talking
Turkey:After
quietly watching Turkey's would-be dictator for life and current
President RejipErdoğan
slowly transform Turkey from a modern democracy to a quasi religious
dictatorship, Washington has now agreed
to look the other way
as he launches an all-out
war on Kurds
– Turkish Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, Pesmerga fighters who have regularly
bested ISIS,any
and all Kurds. The
US is even willing to overlook the evidence a Special Forces raid
uncovered of Turkish
financial support for ISIS,
just as it has over looked the hospital that Ankara operates for
wounded ISIS fighters in
southern Turkey
and the free passage it gives to fighters on their way to join ISIS
in Syria. But
don't worry, the US has begun training 60 Syrian rebels to overthrow
Assad while crushing ISIS. And for only $36 million. So far.

Lost
My Vote:
Chris Christie says that folks in Colorado should smoke 'em if they
got 'em because if he gets to be the president he'll put 'em out. Expediency:
Documents released in the UK show that the US pressured the UK into
releasing hundreds of Nazi officers because the US wanted to suborn
them to ensure that Germany was on its side facing the Russians. The
more things change, the more...

Race
To The Bottom:
President Obama has initiated the “National Strategic Computing
Initiative” with the goal of building computers 30 times faster
than today's supercomputers, because it would be a waste to collect
all our phone calls and emails and not get to read them.

Overly
Candid:There
are so many Republicans running for president that we've lost count
of 'em, but now
there’s another one.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

“We
will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your
content (such as the content of your emails, other private
communications or files in private folders), when we have a good
faith belief that doing so is necessary.”Microsoft

Spade,
Spade:
Huckabee is
right, the reason Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls is
because he is saying things a great number of delusional, ignorant,
angry and irrational people feel to be true. He gives them
permission to vent their hate and vote their insecurities. And if
his popularity does not scare you, go back and study the rise of
Hitler and Mussolini. A lot of smug Republicans think The Donald
cannot be their candidate. They
are wrong. Assigned
Reading:
“What Recovery?” in the July 28 Harper's. To
Bed Without Suffer:
JPMorgan has officially apologized for being a criminal enterprise,
but in its defense points out that the $5.89
billion in fines the 5 too-big-to-flail banks are paying for
cheating nearly everyone in the world only amounts to 3% of their
annual earnings. If anyone seriously wanted to stop this sort of
chicanery, all that would be required would be to send
just one of these CEO's to jail. Ain't gonna happen.

Land
Of Milk And Honey:
In none of these
United States can a single minimum wage earner afford a one-bedroom
apartment. The
Way We Were. And Are:
White folks are beginning to realize that the
criminal justice system isn’t broken. It
is not broken, it is
fixed. It's
been fixed for generations. Against the poor and the black, which is
nearly always redundant.

Pounds
For Pounds:
In Merrie Olde, PM David Cameron has decided that if you are obese
and fail to lose weight at your weekly weigh-in in the public square,
you will lose £100 from your public benefits that week. Suction:
The super-rich have siphoned off
at least $21 trillion and hidden
it from the tax collector. That sum is larger than the entire
American economy. Tell me again why we can't afford Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, or decent infrastructure. No, we don't
need reform. Think bigger.

Wrong
Answer:
Every time someone uses a gun to kill a bunch of people, more
Americans think that more guns is the solution. Average
Averages:
“The
researchers used Bayesian
statistical analyses of 354 dates taken from 30 sites on more
than four continents. By using Bayesian analysis, the researchers
were able to calculate more robust age models through multiple,
progressive statistical iterations that consider all related age
data.” Contemplation:
The investment gurus are once again telling us that “gold is
doomed,” because gold “is really a bet that the people in charge
don't know what they are doing.” Mine's buried in the back yard.

Fire
In A Crowded Theater:
The American Beverage Association is suing San Francisco because the
city requires a warning on soda pop that says it contributes to
obesity, diabetes and death and prohibits ads for sugary drinks on
city property because they have a First Amendment right to poison
their customers. For
Better
Or For Worse:
What happens in the fall of 2016 if the 20% of Republicans who are
dumb, angry, racist or simply stupid prevail during the primaries –
remember it's the crazies foaming at the mouth who show up at the
primary polls – and The Donald is the GOP nominee?
They
can't kick him out and they can't let him stay. Stay tuned, this is
going to get good before it gets to be very sad. Maybe we could have
Trump-Palin.

Parasitism:
One of the primary causes of wage stagnation in the United States is
the huge amount of money the financial services (Wall Street) sector
sucks out of the productive economy.

Long
Story Short:
After 50 years of imminent
failure, Medicare and
Medicaid are still
“eminently sustainable” and are
the
biggest social policy successes in modern history. Jeb
Bush
is not just wrong, he is hopelessly wrong. Republicans hate any
program that shows the government can successfully provide a
universal safety net. They also hate the idea that the private
insurance companies cannot get their hands on the program and make
immense profits while denying claims.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

It's
A Blast:
A distinguished
cast, headed by Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Noam
Chomsky and a thousand other scientists, academics and public figures
is asking for a global ban on “autonomous weapons” - robotic
weapons that operate without and beyond human control. They warn that
a terrifying arms race will be inevitable (probably it is already
underway in secret military labs) and will inevitably lead to “swarms
of robot” weapons that will select, stalk and kill humans
without any active human control. They will be cheap, ubiquitous and
deadly. They will be sold on the black market and operated by
terrorists, dictators and your local gun nut. They are “ideal for
tasks such as assassinations, destabilising nations, subduing
populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.”
And inevitable, no matter who warns us not to let it happen.
Sure,international agreements have successfully prohibited chemical
and biological weapons, but killer robotic drones are simply too
cheap and too easy. It is only a matter of time. The
Ignorant And The Law: Georgia is suing a man for publishing all of Georgia's state
laws on the internet. They claim that this infringes the states
copyright on the laws. And they want citizens to have to pay the
state to find out what the laws say. Greece
II:
Hedge funds that have scooped up Puerto Rico's debt at bargain
basement prices are demanding that Puerto Rico raise taxes, sell off
public buildings, close schools and fire teachers, and drastically
cut all public spending on social services, so that they can reap
enormous profits. Sounds familiar.

Mirage:
Remember when Obama reassured us that under the TPP.
TTIP and TiSA corporations really couldn't sue the government
over regulations and laws by
using the Investor-State
Dispute Settlement process? He forgot to tell Philip Morris,
which is suing the Australian government over its laws regulating
tobacco. Job
Insecurity:
Malaysia's Prime Minister has fired the AG and the deputy PM for
investigating the transfer of $700 million in government funds into
the PM's personal account. Definition:
When we think of militarism, Germans goose-stepping through Berlin
comes to mind. But the F-35 is today's perfect picture of militarism
run wild – the fruit of the military-industrial complex we were
warned of 60 years ago. The F-35 is the most expensive weapons
program in American history. It will cost us well over $1 trillion
before we see the end of it. The military is already buying them –
at about $300 million a copy – even though flight testing and
development continue. It is not now known if they will ever work as
promised, but we know they don't work now and we're buying them
anyway. The engines only last about 25 hours. It is slow and
ungainly and is easily shot down by aging F-15's, and not only
because it cannot yet fire its guns nor drop bombs. But it brings
money to nearly every Congressional district in the nation, so
politicians love it.

Profile:
A new study reports that bullies like Donald Trump have high
self-esteem, social status and very low rates of depression. They're
okay and are pretty damned sure you aren't.

Here
No Evil:
Canadian Conservatives have blocked the country's Finance Minister
from testifying in public because he would have reported that the
country was headed for a $1 billion deficit this year, not the
$1.4-billion surplus they had projected, not even the balanced budget
that is their holy grail. Masked
Avenger:
Sanders’ plan “would look like a tax on carbon; a massive
investment in solar, wind, geothermal; it would be making sure that
every home and building in this country is properly winterized; it
would be putting substantial money into rail, both passenger and
cargo, so we can move towards breaking our dependency on automobiles”

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Social mobility is a good
idea, unless you are at the top of the heap.

Rinse
And Repeat:
If, and it is far from a done deal, Greece gets another €90 billion
or so – bringing the bailouts to about €400 billion
or so
– most of which
will immediately go back to the German, French and other northern
European banks who stupidly lent Greece all that money in the first
place. It is not Greece or the Greeks who are getting bailed out, it
is, as always, the bankers. It's
not about “the European project”, it is now, as it has always
been, about profits.

Noted:
Extreme drought in Mongolia this summer has decimated about 80% of
the country's crops.

What's
Wrong
With
The
Economy?Wealth accumulation and
efficiency and increased production worked so well for the American
economy that as goals they have become outmoded. Today they are the
wrong goals. We have enough. We need to figure out a new way of
addressing our economic and social issues. It is time to declare the
production competition over and begin working on distribution.
Efficiency in production needs to be replaced by equality of
distribution as the goal of our national efforts.

Motivation:
A former AIPAC senior executive admits that their opposition to any
Iranian deal has nothing to do with the merits of the treaty and
everything to do with keeping their donor base in a supportive frame
of mind. Crying wolf pays the bills.

Big
Wheels Keep On Rolling:
The US Senate, bending to the bottom line of America's giant
transportation companies, are planning on letting 18-year olds drive
the big rigs in interstate commerce. Sure the under-21 drivers are
six times more likely to kill people on the highway, but the
companies figure that the savings from paying the kids a lot less
will more than offset the settlements to victims' families. Please
Leave A Message: In 2000 the NSA
intercepted a call from one of the 9/11 hijackers to al-Qadea
operational headquarters in Yemen, and apparently failed to follow up
on it. Or... ?

Tea
Leavings:Durable goods
orders are encouraging because they are a little higher than
expectations, even though the factory sector is still depressed, the
three
month rolling average continues to decline, and data from
previous months was revised downward. Pending orders are in an
eight month decline and shipments declined for the sixth
consecutive month. Bank loans continue to languish and everything is
getting better, the government says.

Different
Strokes: The
Deputy Speaker of the
House of Lords, Lord
Sewel, was
filmed snorting cocaine with prostitutes at his London flat and
has subsequently resigned. He departs with the coveted Wilbur Mills
award.

Fluctuations:
Despite two weeks of increasingly severe attempts by the Chinese
government to stop the bleeding, Chinese shares continue to slide –
down 8.5% on Monday and down
28% from their
high in June. While the Chinese economy is not as tightly connected
to the stock market as are western economies and stock exchanges,
“the
economic situation is deeply clouded.” All
The News That Fits:
The NYTimes acknowledges that its story on Clinton's supposed
classified emails was “inaccurate”. As in made up out of whole
cloth with apparently no fact checking. Corrections will be issued in
tiny print on the bottom of page 34D. Money
Back Guarantee:
The government has become tired of Fiat/Chrysler's less than
sterling record of hiding defects and not properly recalling and
repairing defective vehicles, and has fined them $105 million and is
requiring them to offer to buy back 500,000 pickups.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Foreshadowing:
“Why
have we not learned from our history? I still rub my eyes in
amazement: I would have thought that the Great Depression was a
salient enough event in European history that we would not be making
the same mistakes, exactly, again--and right now it looks like in
what will turn out to be a more extreme way.” Brad
DeLong.

Friends:
The US
is
selling 355 air to ground missiles to Saudi Arabia, for delivery to
Yemen.

'Outrageous':
No one selling coffee and making donuts is worth $15 an hour, says
Nigel Travis, CEO of Dunkin' Donuts. He does support a “living
wage” of $12 and hour, he says. Too bad a living wage for a
two-worker family with two kids requires each make $18.30 and hour.
For a single mom with a couple of kids, more like $30 an hour. Mr
Travis makes $5,000 an hour.

Correlation/Causation:
Recent analysis
suggests that the
lower cost of eating provided by superstores and warehouse clubs,
along with increasing numbers of restaurants
serving enormous
quantities of cheap calories are “leading
drivers of the rise in obesity occurring since the early 1980s.”
Will
power, nah. They made me eat all that stuff.

Marking
Time:
Despite there being a 75% chance that drilling in the Arctic will
result in a major oil spill within ten years, the
Obama administration has told Shell to go for it. Because with oil
at $50 a barrel and far too many barrels on the market, we need to
drill, baby, drill.

Take
Two and Die: Regarding
Ibuprofen,
Celebrex and Aleve - in case you missed the FDA announcement - “We
know that the risk of heart attack and stroke may occur early in
treatment, even in the first week…. There is no period of use shown
to be without risk.”

Infectious
Disease:
Great Britain will soon begin letting corporations pay their way out
of prosecution for all sorts of wrongdoing, misdemeanors and crimes –
just like in the US. The
Not So Serious
Fraud Office (NSSFO)
has said it expects to sign its first deals by the end of the year.

Bill
of Wrongs:
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Houston cannot ban
discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity because
in
Texas
fags don't got rights.

Reality
Check:
The US Secretary of State, a position still held
by
John Kerry despite
Netinyahu's
extreme displeasure, notes that if Israel blocks the Iran nuclear
treaty in the US Senate, the world will rightly blame Israel. When
did Israel get veto power in the Senate? How many generations of
guilt does
the US need
to carry for something the Germans did?

Ignorance
Is Bliss:
There is no science (yet) that shows GMOs present any danger to the
public, so the Republican-controlled House passed a bill preventing
states from requiring products containing GMOs to say so on the
label, because no Republican actually supports the idea of of an
informed electorate. Double
Date:
Rick Perry says we should all be allowed to take our guns to the
movies so we can take part in any shootout that might occur. Porn
O'Graph:
Energy in, prosperity out.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Groundhog
Day: Once again
a US air strike has
killed a top Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

Free
Markets: Citi,
not to be outdone by HSBC (fined $1.9 billion for being the drug
traffickers'
bank of choice), stands accused of laundering drug money through its
Banamex subsidiary. No one will go to jail. Take
Home Pay: How
much would you take home if you didn't have to pay taxes? Apple
has $200
billion sitting
overseas that would only be $130 billion or so if it did the right
thing and brought it home and paid taxes on it. Grocery
Bill:
Economists claim that the $235 decrease in median household
income “was not statistically significant.” Which tells you that
these guys don't do the grocery shopping at their house.

We're
Number One:
“America leads the
world in treating working moms like crap.” Must
Have: Now
there's a “self-censoring font” that will redact the 'trigger'
words NSA uses to screen your emails. Of
course if you click on the
link to the 370 words, a Person of Interest flag is automatically
placed on your file.

Globalization:
It's not just Big Macs and poor wages the US is exporting; the
French Constitutional
Council has ruled that
their security services can eavesdrop on citizens and monitor their
computers even if they are not suspected of any crime.

Why
Not? After
being caught manipulating the price of gold, oil, foreign exchange
rates, the stock market in general, mortgage rates, LIBOR and
babysitting rates in the Hamptons, BofA, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan
Chase – along with 18 smaller fish – have been caught
manipulating US Treasury auctions. That is, they've been rigging how
much the American taxpayer has to pay to borrow several trillion
bucks. No one will go to jail.

Another
Famous Victory: Opium production
has once again reached record levels in Afghanistan. Remember the
good old days when the Taliban had nearly eradicated poppy crops?
Ah, then came Mr. Bush's friends...

Friday, July 24, 2015

Nirvana:
The Labor Department reports that unemployment claims have hit a 42
year low. They didn't direct our attention to the fact that it would
take
a 4.1 million increase in the labor force participation rate to
match 2000's. But adding those 4.1 million into the unemployed would
spoil the fun. And the recovery.
“The three mainstream employment statistics — unemployment, labor
force participation and employment-to-population — all document an
ongoing economic weakness far deeper than the result of a business
cycle downturn.”

Business
Is Business: A
US appellate court has ruled that pharmacy owners are in the business
of selling pills, not bibles.

Constitution,
We don't need no constitution:
The constitution says that if you are born here you are a citizen.
End of requirement. Well, except in Texas, where you don't get a
birth certificate saying you are a naturally born US citizen if your
parents are not. The state says they can't be taken to court for
this federal violation. Maybe that's why the legislators in Austin
want people to be able to
carry guns in hospitals – to help them get birth certificates.

Go
Away: The army
has told its recruiters to treat all the armed gun nuts who have
shown up “to protect” recruiting stations as threats to their
security. It's hard to tell a
gun nut from a home-grown terrorist until it's too late.The
Joke's On Us:
The drug traffickers' favorite money launderer, HSBC, has paid
£28m to settle a Swiss
money-laundering case – on
the condition that no criminal prosecutions are pursued. This is
another slap on the wrist, with yet again no admission of guilt on
the part of HSBC, its officers or employees and no significant hit to
their profits. Yellow
Card: Caterpillar reports that its sales are down 14% y/y globally,
19% in Asia and a whopping 50% in Latin America. In that Cat sells
the big equipment for mining and construction, this is not a
confidence builder for the global economic outlook. Hot
Springs:
The lack of snow last winter has led to thousands of salmon dying in
Oregon steams and hatcheries that are not being cooled by runoff this
summer. Many are being trucked north into Washington state to be
held until they can be returned to their natal waters for release.
Yep, global warming.

The
War Lover:
Bomb'em Boehner has promised to do
everything he can to
make sure that the treaty preventing Iran from getting nuclear
weapons is defeated, so Israel can bomb them at will. With their
nukes.

Friends
In High Places:
In order to avoid embarrassing Prime Minister Margret Thatcher,
MI5 covered up the
ongoing pedophilia of a senior Tory MP, Thatcher's Home Secretary,
Parliamentary Private Secretary, Minister for Northern Ireland, and
at least one titled diplomat. Those four were named because they are
dead and no longer have immunity. Others? Are there others?

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Look!
Over There! Bill
Cosby's
attorney
is complaining that one of Cosby's victims is not honoring the terms
of her confidentiality agreement. Seems fair, Cosby didn't honor her
either.

Ladies
And Gentlemen:
Do not be misled, the inevitable drowning of Miami and New York and
so on will be quite discomforting for millions of inconvenienced
people, but it doesn't come close to the horror show that the
continued absorption of carbon dioxide into the oceans of the world
will produce. Acidification is the term. It leads to
decalcification – as in oysters and shrimp and their cousins will
not be able to build shells and dying.
And corals. And lots of other things, including us.

Comply
or Die;
The New York police commissioner wants to make it a felony to resist
arrest, even if the arrest itself is unwarranted or illegal resisting
it makes it legal. And a felony.

Flagged:
Belatedly, the Navy has acknowledged that three admirals have been
“censured” in a
hushed-up bribery... scandal.
Certainly it's no crime, for two of the three were allowed to retire
as admirals rather than go to jail, while one lost a star and was
sent packing. All get to draw pensions, rather than serve
time
in the brig. Seven others have plead guilty of either offering or
accepting bribes - envelopes of cash, high-end electronics, lavish
travel and accommodations, and prostitutes – in exchange for Naval
contracts. These guys were too dumb
to
do what Army generals have done for decades
– rig
contracts and then retire
and then go to work for defense contractors they have given deals to
while on active duty. Guest
Services:
Hackers have demonstrated that they can remotely take control of a
vehicle while you are driving it. Today's special: About half
a million Chryslers. I'm waiting for the app that lets them
drive the car off somewhere and find place to park, then brings it
back for a few bucks. Or a few hundred, whatever.

Civics
Lesson: The first thing you have to understand about the American
justice system is that there is no such thing. And there's damned
little of that famed trial-by-jury stuff either. The way it works is
that the cops decide you are guilty, arrest you and deliver you to
the DA who meets with a public defender you've never heard of and
only met once for about 12 seconds. There is none of the mythic
“innocent until proven guilty.” You were arrested.
They decide what you are guilty of and how much time you will do and
then your lawyer tells you to take the deal or the DA will get mad
and really slam it to you. Then you are led away, with the theme
music playing over the credits. No trial. No defense. Yes sir, no
sir, three bags full sir. And most assuredly, no one in the whole
system is innocent, except possibly you.

An
Apple A Day:
The rational and free stock market knocked $62 billion off Apple's
market value in six minutes, even though it managed to sock more than
$202 billion away for a rainy day. Go throw a dart.

Check's
In The Mail:
A major earthquake centered on San Francisco is overdue, is expected
“any day now.” Has
been. Will be.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

“How
is it Donald Trump knows it’s all about the voters and everybody
inside the Beltway thinks it’s all about them? Maybe
he’s on to something.”Barry
Ritholtz

Deep
And Deeper:
Dr. James Hansen
and friends – 17 of the world's most prominent climate scientists –
have a new report being published this week that tells it the way
they see it. And what they see is the Greenland and Antarctic
icecaps melting 10 times faster than previously estimated, resulting
in at least 10 feet of sea level rise in the next 50 years. And
after that it will keep rising, for centuries. In their view,
New York City, Miami, London—and every other coastal city on the
planet—have
only
a few decades of habitability left. And
that's without any big methane burps.

Recovery,
Footnoted: One out of four children in Republican-controlled Tennessee now
lives
in poverty. Naturally it is Obama's fault, somehow.

Bricks
Without Straw:The
world's raw materials – as reflected in global commodity prices –
are not in much demand... and the stock markets think this is a good
thing. Well, except for the
fracking sector where banks
are getting nervous. But metals – from iron to silver and gold
– nobody wants. Strange, we are happy not to
be building stuff that requires any of that messy mining and refining
and all... The message seems to be that the consumer isn't buying and
thus commodities are not in demand and somehow
this is a good thing. Inscrutable:
Having got caught after cooking the books for eight years [more
properly called accounting fraud on a massive scale by lying about
the company's profitability], Toshiba's CEO is retiring. Full
pension, etc. No jail, of course.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The
gap between what we know and what we should do about it is getting
bigger and bigger.

Either/Nor:
Demands for the government to do something – put more armed guards
in shopping strips – to prevent deranged youth from doing
incomprehensible things with guns are filling the airwaves following
the Chattanooga killings. The
death of two and wounding of three in Maine by a deranged ex-con
hostage taker with a gun got the national attention it deserved.

Warm-ups:
A massive new study on the state of the oceans reports that the
oceans are in a sorry state and getting worse. Record warming
continues on the surface in the upper levels of the oceans and
continued warming due to climate change is “unstoppable.” Also
unstoppable is the uptake of carbon dioxide by the oceans, and the
acidification that that brings. So the death of the bottom of global
food chain is also unstoppable. Even if we stopped all carbon
emissions today– cars and planes and trucks and trains and burning
coal
and burning oil and burning natural
gas - “the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and
millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels
will continue to rise.” Fun times.

Forgotten
But Not Gone:
Nuclear experts say that the catastrophe at Fukushima is not over.
It is leaking cesium, strontium, and plutonium into the Pacific and
will for years to come. The ice wall that was supposed to contain
the radioactive water is a “complete failure” and radioactive
material continues to infiltrate the ground water.

Small
Victories:India
has successfully blocked two patent claims of US consumer goods major
Colgate-Palmolive, which wanted intellectual property right (IPR)
cover on traditionaltwo
combinations
of native
Indian
spices and other herbs used
as medicines It's called biopiracy, when a giant corporation
attempts to privatize and profiteer from traditional medicines.
That's 2 down, 1,500 to go. Memory
Lane:
Two through efforts-
one
by the defense department and one by the CIA – failed to find
stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. None were found because there never had
been any and Bush/Cheney knew it and deliberately lied to you.
Repeatedly. And you believed them. They used those lies to start a
war and kill upwards of a million Iraqis and strip you your civil
liberties. Half of you still think it was a Good Idea.

Drop
In The Bucket:
The California drought (which is
worse than you think) is just the beginning for water problems,
and it is not unique to the US. The UN reports that by 2030 global
water demand will exceed supply by 40% and that
21 of the world’s 37 largest aquifers have
passed their tipping points and are no longer sustainable. That means
they are going to run out. And 'global' doesn't mean just in poor
countries. The price of water in 30 major US cities is rising faster
than most other household goods – it's up 40% in the last 5 years.

Monday, July 20, 2015

“A nation can only withstand so much economic pain before the political fallout
becomes ugly. And that fallout can extend beyond the border of the
problem nation.”Greg
Mankiw

Puzzlement:
We know that our entire culture, our economy, our industry and our
political system are leading us to a disaster, yet the fruits of our
culture, economy etc. make it impossible for us to avoid the
inevitable. Or to even talk about it. Don't blame it on them,
Pogo.

Echoes:
For all the punditry trying to explain the Donald Trump phenomena,
few seem to understand that Trump taps into the long cultivated slice
of the Republican right that is permanently estranged, frustrated,
mad-as-hell and, sadly, full of hate and anger. Political
correctness
keeps the media from acknowledging what The Donald knows is true –
there is a large part of the electorate who want to hate and want to
share their hatred. The elite want to pretend that he is a sideshow,
a ridiculous
egomaniac and
a bully.
So
was Hitler, so was Mussolini.

The
Map & The Territory:
The EU was supposed to be the pat to a continent-wide blossoming
of social, political and economic cohesion and peace. The smaller
steps were reasonable, but the coming of the eurozone was the
beginning of the end. Instead of sustainable
prosperity and its bedmate peace, what we see now is the rise of
unrest, unemployment, poverty and disappointment that is feeding a
revival of racist, xenophobic, reactionary politics. Golden Dawn,
France's National Front, the UKIP are the future. As are the wars
that will come with them. Without
Comprehension:
China's burgeoning growth is leading to the rise of a new city, a
megalopolis called Jing-Jin-Ji. Centered on Beijing it will cover as
much area as the state of Kansas and is expected to be the home of
130 million people. Me, I'm glad I've got that cabin in Maine. The
Competition:If
you are still wondering what happened to all the good jobs in the US
and have not quite understood what globalization and all that free
trade horseshit is about, let me point out that the folks who
actually make your clothing live in Myanmar
(which
you cannot even find on a map) and work for companies that refuse to
pay their workers 40 cents an hour. Porn
O'Graph:
How deep is the ocean?

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.